Woodstock festival: 'We never realised that there were so many of us’

By Lucy Davies

Forty years ago this month, from 15 to 18 August 1969, a congregation just shy
of half a million gathered in a field in Bethel, New York for a music
festival the significance of which nobody could have anticipated. Billed
simply as 'Three days of Peace and Music’, Woodstock festival has come to
encapsulate a mythic parting of the waves; the moment the American youth
elected to alter the direction in which history was moving: “If you knew
that the guy driving the train was out of his freaking mind,” said Arlo
Guthrie “ you’d get off the train, wouldn’t you?” Photographer Henry Diltz
presents his own images of the festival and recalls the personal stories
behind his historic shots.

Alfalfa field, Max Yasgur's farm in Bethel, New York

I arrived at Yasgur’s Farm — wearing my Beatles haircut and hippie love beads,
with two Nikon cameras slung round my neck —a good couple of weeks before
the concert began. My brief was to roam about and document the build-up, as
well as the event itself. They were just in the process of moving locations,
having been kicked out of Wallkill [the town in Orange County, New York,
original slated for the event, whose council refused a permit] and
frantically building this huge wooden structure at the bottom of the hill.
That was the first thing I saw — long-haired carpenters with their shirts
off sawing and hammering on a huge deck. When I got close and in among the
new and good smelling lumber, I found that if you looked out all you could
see was this green blowing alfalfa field — waves of it blowing in the
breeze. It was just like being at sea on an aircraft carrier.